At the start of April I wrote about the consolidation in the service management space and the major trends of:

• Consolidation of functionality.  Just like enterprise IT, as mature functions are subsumed.  For example, once upon a time a service provider would buy a VoIP fulfillment platform, now multi-service fulfillment is the norm.
• Emergence of managed solutions.  This is coming more from the Service Delivery side of the competitive landscape.  Rather than buy a license and pay an SI, we're starting to see solutions (particularly in self-service) being managed by the technology provider on behalf of the service provider; which saves costs for the operator and the technology supplier, especially for those with scale.
• Consolidation of companies.  The 'big guys' like Oracle and IBM have recently bought some of the medium-sized suppliers; but we're also seeing consolidation amongst the medium sized suppliers, e.g. Sigma Systems buying C-Cor, and Subex buying Syndesis, as they race to achieve scale.
• Best of Breed components do not generate a Best of Breed system.  Tier 2/3 markets have generally focused upon all-in-one solutions because of limited scale and cash.  Tier 1 operators have generally implemented a 'best of breed' component approach.  However, as we've seen in several cases, which I'll not name here, having a kitchen full of Michelin chefs does not necessarily result in a meal worthy of a Michelin star.
• Strong push with most operators to control their escalating BOSS spend on both legacy and new services.

Since that article we've seen the follow consolidation:

• Amdocs is buying Jacobs Rimmel for approximately $45 million in cash;
• Sonus bought Atreus for a rumored $25m (unclear if its cash or stock as terms were not disclosed);
• Comptel bought Axiom for $7m GBP cash ($14m);
• Alcatel Lucent is buying Motive for $67.8m in cash; and
• NEC is buying NetCracker Technology,in a reported $300 million deal.

I thought by the end of this year I'd need to update the small-medium fulfillment landscape, however, with the above 5 deals being announced within 3 months, I'm updating sooner than I expected.  Generally these smaller companies have exited into the larger telecom network equipment providers or telecom software solution providers.  What will be interesting to see over the coming months is whether some of the medium sized suppliers in this space can merge and create a long-term viable independent business necessary for sustained innovation and price competition, or will they all just exit into the 'big guys.'

Sigma Systems' first User Conference (June 4th-6th, Barton Creek Resort), explored the next generation of consumer and business oriented services, including insight and discussion around emerging trends and technology developments in the following areas:  targeted advertising, evolution of commercial VoIP & data services, global deployments in mobile broadband services, evolution to on-demand services, converged applications over video networks, data and multimedia services and IT back-office transformation.  In the OSS Consolidation article I included Sigma Systems in the Service Fulfillment Landscape.

At the user conference I ran the panel session "Where's the Mobile Industry Going?" with John Namovic, Managing Partner at Deloitte; and Wedge Greene, Industry Guru.  The session's objective was to help the audience understand how mobile is going broadband from those working on the 'bleeding edge' of the mobile industry. Providing a comprehensive global overview of the mobile operator's evolution to broadband; including network evolution, new services and applications, emerging business models (MNO vs. MVNO), and review of important lessons learned.  In particular we'll be reviewing mobile broadband services, evolution to LTE (Long Term Evolution), xVNO economics (Virtual Network Operator (where x = mobile, fixed, converged and possibly even cable)), and FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) successes and failures.

Summary of panel discussion:

LTE Summary
1) What is Long Term Evolution (LTE)?  

• Also know as 4G, LTE is an OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) radio system that can flexibly use radio spectrum, rather than the restrictive paired 5 MHz spectrum of old mobile radio systems.  In a 10MHz slot you could see 100-150 Mbit/s of capacity, though it's not much more spectrally efficient than HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access).  See my Mobile World Congress 2008 article for a discussion on HSPA+.  The big advantage LTE has over WiMAX is global volume; LTE will be adopted worldwide, with DoCoMo and Verizon Wireless leading the way.  LTE also includes some useful operational features, but I'll not go into that here.

2) What are the operator's drivers to adopt LTE?  

• Utilize new frequency bands being auctioned, for 3GPP and 3GPP2 at 1.7 GHz, 2.1 GHz and 2.6 GHz. 
  
• Finally use unpaired (TDD) spectrum resources.
• CDMA operators with no future upgrade path can use LTE in existing spectrum to provide increased capacity and new services. 
  
• GSM operators without 3G licenses can use LTE to upgrade the network.
• Fixed network replacement in rural areas could use LTE. 
  
• Mobile operators HSPA coverage can use LTE selectively, building as the network needs to grow.

3) When is LTE likely to happen?

• Verizon and DoCoMo will likely have a commercial launch in 2010. 
  
• For the rest of the world, HSPA+ will be a significant impediment to LTE adoption, as well as the change-out in the core network required.  So LTE will likely be delayed until 2011-2013.

4) What should a CableCo do?

• Verizon realizes that global volumes matter, and is moving away from its "CDMA island' to LTE. 
  
• WiMAX makes sense in developing nations that lack a copper infrastructure to provide voice and mid-band internet access.  However, a lack of spectrum co-ordination leads to the creation of lots of 'WiMAX islands.' 
  
• For a MSO with spectrum, WiMAX is the only game in town at the moment, though wait 3 years and there will be a global standard that leverages global volumes which is critical for CPE cost management. 
  
• Recommendation for MSOs is to focus on what your customers want: the battle is video as Verizon and AT&T enter the market.  The mobile part of a quad play will become important in the US market (all those shared minutes plans), the battle isn't there yet and an MVNO could be a stop-gap.  Perhaps it makes sense to wait for LTE, than bet on the "son-of-LMDS/MMDS."

FMC Summary (not covered in session)
1) What is FMC?

• The most successful FMC service by far is the mobile phone, if by FMC you mean Fixed Mobile Conversion.  When consumers have unlimited nights and weekend minutes, FMC offers little benefit.  So let's take an enterprise centric perspective, there are 4 approaches to FMC:

1. The handset centric dual-mode approach where the enterprise replaces the mobile network with short-range radio (WiFi, DECT or Bluetooth) in the office.   They retain the mobile network for off-premises mobility.
2. The enterprise uses signaling and/or VPN (Virtual Private Network) functionality to give it more control over call routing and costs.
3. The mobile operators' favorite, is the substitution approach.
4. An evolution from (c) is the inclusion of femtocells in the office network, generally to offload some of the mobile traffic from its own backhaul network.

2) What are an operator's drivers to adopt FMC?

• For a fixed line operator as an attempt to stop fixed line revenue erosion, e.g. BT Fusion.
• For US mobile operators to manage indoor coverage, e.g. Sprint's AIRAVE femtocell trial.
• For a mobile operator it's to offload traffic from its backhaul network (femtocell).

3) What is happening with FMC today?

• For consumer: BT Fusion has failed, Sprint's AIRAVE (Femtocell) is still in trial after 9 months, though Orange Unik is achieved success with 500k+ customers.
• For enterprise: Most enterprises view the 'integration' and 'dual mode' approaches as unproven technologies.  When IT decision makers think convergence, it isn't about FMC; their convergence perspective is around voice and data (IP telephony).

4) What should a CableCo do?

• FMC has struggled as the benefits do not accrue to the customer; the benefits mainly accrue the operator.  So any FMC voice or internet access service must be transparent to the customer before they'll take off.  However, there are a range of FMC services that are gaining traction, for example Slingbox: watching my cable service on my PC or mobile when I'm away from home.  Accessing my home DVR from my mobile or laptop to record a program a colleague just mentioned while I'm in the office.  Home security service (e.g. home WiFi camera) enabling secure remote access from a PC or my mobile.  The list goes on...  What these services have in common is allowing me to do something new that I could not imagine doing 10 years ago and has value to me.  10 years ago I could call from home, and FMC has not changed that, only made it a little more complex and frustrating when I thought I was on the home hub, but instead was on the mobile network, so my international call cost $5 rather than 50c so I've got to waste an hour with a CSR (Customer Service Representative)...
• Recommendation for MSOs: Only use FMC for the basic services when it's completely transparent to the customer (and that includes handset range).  Focus upon new services that leverage cable's unique position in people's lives, cable = video.

What is a 'service delivery architecture'?  It really depends upon with whom you are talking.  Are they are a vendor trying to sell IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), or a Java games download platform; or are they an operator responsible for value-added communication services, IPTV, or content services.  Each will likely give quite different answers.  Service delivery architectures have a long history; their roots can be traces to the FN (Feature Node) that emerged in the intelligent network (IN) concept defined by the ITU-T back in the 1980s.  In the FN a SCE (Service Creation Environment) enabled operators to create new communication services without the need to change the software in the exchanges.

This evolved into the IN SDP (Service Delivery Platform), an architecture that enables re-use of service components.  Most operators today have IN implemented in their networks, though most of the SDP implementations tend to be bundled into a specific service implementation, for example caller ring back tone.  The IN SDP has not achieved the ubiquity of deployment as a horizontal layer within the telecommunication software stack, rather a component of a vertical application.  The move from vertical (stove-pipe) to horizontal: faster and cheaper time to market for new services and enabling service innovation independent of switch vendor did not significantly happen.

As networks have evolved from circuit-centric to packet-centric, the SDP has started to extended its reach beyond communication services, to include content services, streaming services, and even broadcast services.  With this move the use of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) as an integration framework has emerged, given the successful implementations of SOA for BOSS (Business and Operational Support Systems) systems.

So we arrive at today, where the SDP is has come full circle and is positioned again as a platform for the creation of new communication services, but this time in the IP domain encompassing IMS.  Since 1999 IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) has been standardized by 3GPP, it enables service control for IP based multimedia communications, across any IP based access.  So the SDP is now positioning across all services and all access, an all-encompassing service delivery architecture, with a total market size of roughly $2B in 2007, source OSS Observer.

A commonly used service delivery platform definition is an IT-based environment, enabling service creation in an environment that does not rely on a specific network element enabler. This comes from the need to cut costs in the service creation process; in saturated markets service providers want to differentiate through their service offerings.  And the need to enable third-party companies to provision services through the service provider environment.  Typically, most SDPs include a service creation environment, a service orchestration environment, a service execution environment and third-party management.

Another way to look at the SDP is to relate it to boxes/functions we already see in an operators network:

• Content Delivery Platform, e.g. a platform that enables content such as ring-tones or movies to be successfully presented and delivered to customers.
• Communications Gateway, e.g. a Parlay server that exposes call control capabilities.
• Telco API, e.g. The exposure of network capabilities across communications and content to third parties.
• BOSS, e.g. a service creation process aligning to 'Common Capabilities.'  A Common Capability is used by many different services e.g. IVR; an 'authentication' common capability that bundles the capabilities of an AAA server with some of the features of an ID management system; and accounting functions, e.g. an internal directory server.

Taking this view it becomes a little clearer why there are just so many suppliers that fall under the SDP label, a subset is listed here: Accenture, Acision, Alcatel-Lucent, AePONA/Appium, Airwide, Amdocs/Qpass, BEA/oracle, Broadsoft, CoreMedia, Comverse, Convergin, End2End/Mach, Ericsson/Drutt, Genband, HP, IBM, IMImobile, jNETx, Metaswitch, Microsoft, Motorola/Leapstone, Motricity, mPortal, NSN, NEC, NetCentrex, Nortel, OpenCloud, OpenWave, Oracle/BEA, Pactolous, Personeta, Qualcomm/Elata, Red Hat/Mobicents, Redknee, Telcordia, Telenity, Sun, Sybase/Mobile365, Ubiquity/Avaya, Verisign/mQube, Volantis.  The SDP Landscape is definitely complex, confusing and consolidating as I write.

But coming back to why an operator should consider a SDP.  The drivers for the SDP are clear: to extend the life of traditional services; lower costs associated with the development and introduction of new services; extend services across networks and devices; provide an operating environment and development tools for third-party software developers; and improve the profitability of niche services.  However, the challenges to implementation are equally as clear: managing end-to-end application performance; modular, standards-based service delivery platforms are still relatively immature; integration; service provider organizational challenges; lack of a compelling business case; lack of standards creates confusion and trepidation; and marketing challenges.

As part of the SDP (Service Delivery Platform) workshop a run I go into depth on this topic and review a number of case studies.  In general my recommendations for operators are:

• The part of SDP that deals with operations (BOSS) has a clear business case and operators are adopting the same tools as enterprises based on SOA;
• The part of the SDP focused on content services is maturing and becoming a managed service;
• The part of SDP focused upon communication services is still in an experimental stage, with some initial success focused upon enterprise services;
• The part of the SDP focused upon third parties, the Telco API is a current hot topic within the industry with a few examples of initial success such as Sprint's Business Mobility Framework.

How the parts get integrated into an all-encompassing SDP is a question I'll leave for another weblog entry.

We've all experienced it: you're on a call, not moving around, just talking and the call drops, you check the signal level on the phone and it's gone only to return to near full strength as you check.  Does the operator even know what's just happened?  And then when you're on the move, for example on the Gatwick Express (between London Gatwick Airport and Victoria Station), there are several points on the train ride where you see most people who are on the phone either start shouting at it or removing it from their ear to look at what's going on.  The phone is an invaluable source of information on the status of the operator's network, yet it remains an under-utilized asset in the fight to improve service levels on the most basic service.

This is the problem Wadaro addresses, monitoring network and service performance from the phone.  It's embedded software on the phone, from a simple SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) application to a sophisticated OS (Operating System) application.  At the lowest end it just monitors the phone state when a call terminates, so its impact on the phone is not perceptible to the user, and it enables an operator to make its existing phone portfolio become part of the network, service and usage monitoring.  Network quality is important to customers, after price is the next decision criteria. 

Operators in the US focus upon network quality as their core differentiation where they spend billions of dollars in building the brand and embedded their bylines in the public's subconscious, e.g. for Verizon their byline is "the nation's most reliable wireless network," whilst AT&T's is "the network with the fewest dropped calls."  We're also seeing operators such as O2 allow their business customers to see the status of their network, with services such as Network Manager GSM and Network Manager GPRS.  Extending that to the status and usage of the services their employees are receiving on their phones provides that last step which moves a 'nice to have' into a 'must have' differentiator.

Their application can also improve customer service.  For example, most customers have no idea what model their phone is. So when they call customer support, the first few minutes are a frustrating dialog of finding out who the customer is and what equipment they have. With Wadaro when the customer calls the support team, the CSR (Customer Service Representative) can know the phone model without asking the customer. Even if the customer has purchased their own unlocked phone elsewhere, the operator can still know the make, model and its performance history.  Next, the operator can proactively identify and remedy errors. If the Wadaro app is showing that the customer can't connect to her email server or collect her MMS, the operator can stimulate device management to correctly configure her device.

The main challenge is getting the Wadaro application onto devices.  For new devices the software can be bundled on the SIM and/or phone.  For existing devices it's a little more complex and will be dependent upon the operator's OTA (Over The Air) capabilities and how aggressively the operator promotes the application and its benefits to customers.  Its one of those areas, where you'd think operators would already be using the phones on their network to let me know how things are working from a customer's perspective.

Starting with a few definitions:

• Service Fulfillment systems support processes that ensure service providers give requested services to customers in a timely and correct manner, so called Order-to-Cash cycle.
• Service Assurance solutions monitor service performance based on the customer's view, not the network manager's view, based on defined key performance indicators (KPIs), key quality indicators (KQIs) and service-level agreements (SLAs).  These solutions help service providers connect network, service performance with the end-user experience, so called Customer-Assurance cycle.

Although Service Fulfillment and Service Assurance play complementary roles, there is a disconnect between these two functions in service providers' infrastructure. This hinders the service provider's ability to improve the customer experience, reduce support costs, accelerate time-to-market of services and assure smooth introduction of launched services from day one. Hence the focus upon the integration of Service Assurance and Service Fulfillment solutions, sometimes termed Service Management, which enable service providers to have an end-to-end view of services data, without the need for replication of data across fulfillment and assurance systems.

The goal of the service provider is to provide any service on any network to any device. There are also many more services, with service bundles being frequently modified, sometimes in real time. It is therefore no longer enough to manage the customer, the network or the resource. It is now important to manage the service as an entity in its own right. In addition, service data is usually held in several systems in a service provider's environment such as a legacy fulfillment or assurance system, and the many subscriber management system silos. By linking service fulfillment and assurance, service providers have a single view of services data.

So Service Management appears to be growing out of the consolidation of these functions, more general industry consolidation, and the trend to delivering a broader integrated BOSS (Business and Operational Support System) solution.  An example of this consolidation is Subex that acquired Syndesis last year.  Syndesis is a service fulfillment platform for Triple Play services.  After the acquisition Subex created a service fulfillment and assurance division focused upon 'service agility' (the ability to provide better services and multiple services) for what Subex terms "operational dexterity" which falls into this category of Service Management.

Just to make things a little more complex, within Service Assurance is a function called Service Management (though I more frequently see it being called Service Monitoring these days) as the software systems that measure and monitor services including the overall quality of each service and its business impact on a particular set of customers. Service management systems enable CSPs (Communication Service Providers) to generate granular reporting capability by each customer and service to validate service level commitments. Key quality indicators are measured in each specific network domain to alert CSPs of degraded network performance leading to unsatisfactory customer experience.  The main vendors are HP, IBM (Vallent), Telcordia, Agilent, Ericsson and Nokia accounting for about 60% of the market.

But moving back to the broader definition of Service Management, competition in this space comes from providers focused on Service Fulfillment, Service Assurance and Service Deliver Platform providers.  It's a complex competitive landscape.  Just focusing upon Fulfillment as an example, some of the big players are, Amdocs (Cramer), Ericsson, HP, IBM (Vallent, Micromuse), Oracle (BEA, Metasolv, Portal), Sybex (Syndesis), Telcordia and Wipro.  In the small and medium sized company landscape are about 20 suppliers in this segment, shown in the attached table, let me know if there are any mistakes.  This table analyses each from their technology focus (VoIP, IMS, Triple Play / IPTV, DSL / HSD, and IP VPN / Ethernet), customer focus (ISP / xVNO, Broadband, Mobile and Cable), region focus (EMEA, LATAM, APAC and NAR), and functional focus within Service Fulfillment (Inventory, Mediation, Order Management, Work-Flow / Provisioning, Activation, Catalog, Self-Serv, and Service Tools).

Now in addition to the Fulfillment landscape there is an equally complex Assurance landscape and an even more complex Service Delivery landscape, which I'll not tackle here.  Rather to wrap up this article I thought I'd finish on the few trends I see emerging:

• Consolidation of functionality.  Just like enterprise IT, as mature functions are subsumed.  For example, once upon a time a service provider would buy a VoIP fulfillment platform, now multi-service fulfillment is the norm.
• Emergence of managed solutions.  This is coming more from the Service Delivery side of the competitive landscape.  Rather than buy a license and pay an SI, we're starting to see solutions (particularly in self-service) being managed by the technology provider on behalf of the service provider; which saves costs for the operator and the technology supplier, especially for those with scale.
• Consolidation of companies.  The big guys like Oracle and IBM have recently bought some of the medium-sized suppliers; but we're also seeing consolidation amongst the medium sized suppliers, e.g. Sigma Systems buying C-Cor, and Subex buying Syndesis, as they race to achieve scale.
• Best of Breed components do not generate a Best of Breed system.  Tier 2/3 markets have generally focused upon all-in-one solutions because of limited scale and cash.  Tier 1 operators have generally implemented a 'best of breed' component approach.  However, as we've seen in several cases, which I'll not name here, having a kitchen full of Michelin chefs does not necessarily result in a meal worthy of a Michelin star.
• Strong push with most operators to control their escalating BOSS spend on both legacy and new services.

This sets up an interesting phase in OSS consolidation, where we have three major functional segments of the BOSS industry starting to merge, a strong push to control BOSS costs from operators, emergence of business models (managed services) which require scale, and a push-back on the rational for best of breed components.  By the end of this year, I think I'll need to be updating the small-medium fulfillment landscape again.